Facilitation Stories

In today's episode, Nikki talks to Perle Laouenan-Catchpole, an Amsterdam-based facilitator and experienced designer. Perle shares the origins of Perle's award-winning, open-source workshop that aids individuals in identifying their personal climate action. Perle discusses the importance of open source in facilitation work and the impact it has on personal growth, relationship-building and work pe...

In this episode, Pilar talks to fellow podcast team members Helene and Nikki, along with Penny Walker and Shanaka Dias about a global, hybrid process they facilitated together, running over 4 days with multiple languages and timezones. They reflect on planning in advance, adapting in the moment and working well as a team. The full transcript is below. All of the team can be found on LinkedIn: Penn...

In this episode of Facilitation Stories Pilar is joined by Sue Bird, who is a European public affairs specialist and facilitator. Sue ran a session on facilitating for government at the recent IAF conference. She talks about how pleased she was to be able to attend the IAF England and Wales conference in Birmingham recently, and how it was great to be able to meet fellow facilitators and understan...

In today's episode Nikki talks to Ann   Nkune  about her rediscovery of Appreciative Inquiry.   Ann is a facilitator working with  charit ies, social enterprise s and the public sector helping people to increase their impact and be sustainable . Her work over the last 10 years has been parent friendly start up and career dev elopment programmes for women operate in the env ironmental and social im...

In t his episode Pilar talks to Paul Kelly and Caroline Jessop about co-facilitation.   Caroline is a facilitator based just outside Winchester . She describes herself as a creative facilitator and enjoys the things that leave people upbeat and energised.     Paul is the founder of Pandek Group which is a Facilitation, Training and Coaching business based in the South West specialising in bridging...

In today's episode, Helene talks to Catherine Wilks about her experience of running a session at last year's conference. They talk about The Shoopery, working on instinct and play, adapting the plan as you go along, the power of letting go and the plans for the April 2023 conference.  Catherine was introduced to the IAF and the idea that she may actually be a facilitator by Cat Duncan Rees (IAF En...

In this episode Nikki talks to Lucy Hawthorne who for the past year has been experimenting with bringing playfulness to conversations about climate. Lucy is a facilitator by trade and an environmental campaigner by background and has been exploring the link between playfulness and climate action for around five years. In the latter stages of her campaigning work, Lucy was at her most successful, i...

We wrap up the year talking to three hosts of our Meetups to find out what's been going on in their regions: what common themes have emerged throughout the year and their plans for 2023.  Join our Meetups in person, or online (you can join any region when you join online!).  https://www.meetup.com/iaf-facilitators-and-friends/ 01.41mins Helene Jewell tells Pilar Orti what's been going on in the So...

Today we have a treat for you: Nikki Wilson interviews two guests who use photography as part of their facilitation practice. Gianpietro Pucciariello and Chris Chinnock. Our first guest is Gianpietro Pucciariello, who returns to the show after appearing in episode 15. Gianpietro's working life in the UK is divided into two: he's a start up founder and a sole trader that covers many roles.   He sup...

Happy Facilitation Week everyone!  We are releasing this bonus episode to celebrate all things facilitation.  In this episode, which we've borrowed from the 21st Century Work Life podcast, Pilar talks to Simon Wilson about how he incorporates asynchronous communication into his facilitation processes - and the challenges this brings.  You can see the full show notes over at https://www.virtualnotd...

For this episode, Pilar is joined by John Monks to talk about how to have a conversation with a client about whether your event or workshop should be in person or online. John is a facilitator, and partner of Curve. He coaches CEOs, and has digested his practice of many years into the book Closer Apart: How to Design and Facilitate Brilliant Workshops Online, which he's co-written with Lizzie Shup...

In this episode Nikki talks to Tanya Nash. Tanya is the Founder of Future Clarity.  She is a facilitator, coach, trainer and researcher and works with people in the sustainability field or organisations looking to make sustainability one of their core organising principles.     Tanya  is also one of the hosts of the IAF Wales and Cardiff meetup. Her and Nikki reflect on a discussion that took plac...

In today's episode, Pilar talks to Myriam Hadnes, facilitator and host of the Workshops Work podcast and founder of the Never Done Before festival.  Myriam first realised she was a facilitator after she read Priay Parker's "The Art of Gathering". Her perception of facilitation has broadened since then: she now thinks more of having the mindset of a facilitator as she's doing less and less pure fac...

In this episode Nikki talks to Helene about the recent "Re-Facilitation Conference". This was a hybrid conference with around half of the participants meeting in person and half Zooming in.  The conference had three streams - one fully in person, one fully virtual and one designed to be hybrid, joined by people in the room and those joining virtually. They start by talking about the evolving team...

In today's episode Pilar talks to facilitator Paul Kelly.  He's going to be running two sessions at the IAFEW Re-Facilitation conference on 13th-14th May 2022 in Birmingham and online. His first session will be on "Collaborative Consensus"and the second will be a facilitated discussion around neurodiversity. (A note to readers on the website: we have some gremlins playing around with our text here...

In this episode of Facilitation Stores, host Helene Jewell is joined by guest Lisa Morgans Lisa is a vet, researcher and facilitator. She is Head of Livestock at Innovation for Agriculture – an independent knowledge exchange charity based in England that works to bridge the science-practice gap and support farmers as they transition to a more sustainable, resilient and productive farming system. L...

In this episode Pilar welcomes two guests. First she talks to Adrian Ashton .  They start talking about Adrian's relationship with facilitation and how over time he's become more involved with the IAF and hosts the North of England meetup.  He talks about some of the highlights of running the group.  They've experimented a lot with location, themes, topics and guests.  Adrian highlights the variet...

In this episode Pilar talks to Penny Pullan, Director of "Making Projects Work" and author of "Virtual Leadership: Practical Strategies for Success with Remote or Hybrid Work and Teams", just out in its second edition, and in 2021,  "Making Workshops Work: Creative Collaboration for Our Time". Penny explains that Making Workshops Work was originally contracted and due to be published in 2016 but t...

Just saying hello, we'll be back with a proper episode soon. Let us know you're listening!  We're @fac_stories on Twitter Check out facilitationstories.com

In this episode, Pilar talks to Anish Hindocha, who has recently taken the IAF Endorsed Facilitator assessment process. They talk about Anish's experience through the process and then move on to talk about the challenges of being truly inclusive.   (You can check out an earlier conversation they had, in episode 08 of Facilitation Stories. https://facilitationstories.com/fs08-what-happens-at-our-me...

In this episode, Pilar interviews Helene Jewell CPF about her experience of going through the CPF Certification Process as someone already experienced in facilitation. Helene has been working for 7/8 years as a freelancer, with a background in international development and Speech and Language Therapy where she started doing training and working with groups. Pilar asks Helene what she did to develo...

Today's host is Nikki Wilson, talking to guest David Bishop, bilingual trainer and facilitator, based in France. David's adventures in facilitation started about 10 years ago, when he was training managers on presentation and negotiation skills. His own practice took him towards being a meeting host, and a facilitator (though he wasn't aware of that term at the time). He's been with IAF for 3 year...

In this episode, Pilar talks to three of the co-authors of the book The Power of Facilitation, which was released this summer of 2021. Our conversation today is a little bit different, as it's an edited recording of the meetup that took place on 7 July 2021, a panel discussion with the authors, with contributions from the other attendees. The three panelists you'll hear from are Martin Gilbraith,...

We have two guests joining our host Nikki Wilson in this episode: Steve Yorkstone, talking about IAF Scotland and Ewen Le Borgne, who talks about process literacy with Liberating Structures. Steve Yorkstone, tells us about how he got involved with the IAF and how he's ended up running the IAF Scotland chapter.  Since he's taken the baton, Steve has set up a website for the chapter, where people ca...

In this episode Helene talks to Alex Williams Lead Trainer and Facilitator for nature-based learning at Muddy Feet.   All Alex and her team's facilitation is outside, taking groups of all ages out to urban and rural wild spaces encouraging nature connection.    Helene asks why Alex chooses to work outdoors.  This is largely as the focus of the work is linking people to their environment.  It start...